Reliable Sources

The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.

Reliable Sources
“President Obama sent a secret letter to Russia’s president last month suggesting that he would back off deploying a new missile defense system in Eastern Europe if Moscow would help stop Iran from developing long-range weapons, American officials said Monday,” the New York Times reports from Washington:

The officials who described the contents of the message requested anonymity because it has not been made public.

Now that it has been made public, via a front-page story in the New York Times, doesn’t the Times have an obligation to reveal the names of its sources?

Politico, meanwhile, reports that Nancy Pelosi keeps an enemies list, or, as reporter Glenn Thrush puts it, “a ‘disfavor file’ in her head–a roster of those whom she believes have screwed up, betrayed her, challenged her or merely annoyed her.”

But Pelosi’s allies “warn that overstating her vindictiveness feeds into the right-wing caricatures of Pelosi and perpetuates ethnic and gender stereotypes”–a risk that your courageous columnist is willing to take:

“She’s not a vengeful person, per se, and she thinks that people who do bad things eventually get their due without her intervention,” a longtime associate said on condition of anonymity.

Uh-huh. She’s so not-vengeful that longtime associates are willing to talk about how vengeful she isn’t only on condition of anonymity.

For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.”